At 11:20am on Tuesday 3 August 2021, Swisscom’s network went down for 45 minutes, according to Fing, a network monitoring service. The outage stretched across nearly all of Switzerland’s highly populated plateau as well as the most southern part of the canton of Ticino, affecting most of the company’s customers – see image below. According […]
Covid: Swiss cases up 26% this week but deaths remain low
This week, 6,303 new cases of Covid-19 were reported in Switzerland, up 26% from the week before (4,988). At the same time the week saw 3 deaths, the same number as the week before. Most of the vulnerable have now been been vaccinated in Switzerland and the vast majority of new cases are now among […]
Personal views on Covid wrecking relationships in Switzerland
A recent survey reveals the negative impact differing views on Covid are having on relationships in Switzerland. 62% of those surveyed said they were currently engaged in a disagreement over how the disease should be dealt with. And 26% had already broken off contact with someone as a result, reports SRF. Covid conflict is affecting […]
Europe’s first hyperloop opens in Switzerland
Engineers at EPFL’s DESL lab, working in association with EPFL spin-off Swisspod, have built a Hyperloop test track on the Lausanne campus in Switzerland. They will use the loop – a large vacuum tube for ultra-high-speed travel – to test a linear induction motor, an electric motor that can produce a levitation effect. Hyperloops, viewed […]
Swiss heirs must repay 15 years of any illegally claimed welfare
In 2016, the social security office in Zurich discovered a concealed bank account containing CHF 1 million belonging to a deceased man who had received welfare payments for 13 years, reported RTS. Over the 13 years, the man had received financial hardship payments, known as supplemental benefits, and health insurance subsidies amounting to CHF 140,000. […]
Zurich airport: 5% to 10% of passengers not boarding due to Covid document issues
During July 2021, around 5% to 10% of long-haul passengers, many in transit, were unable to depart from Zurich airport because their Covid-19 documents did not comply with destination country regulations, reported the newspaper Le Temps. In June 2021, around 700 passengers, most of which were in transit, found themselves stuck at Zurich airport. According […]
Unvaccinated 80 times more likely to catch Covid-19, finds Swiss study
Recent analysis of data done in the Swiss canton of Vaud found rate of Covid-19 was 83 times higher among the unvaccinated than those who had received two shots of vaccine, reported RTS. During the last two weeks of July 2021, the rate of infection among the vaccinated population was 2.6 per 100,000 compared to […]
Covid: Swiss cases rise this week as vaccination grinds to a halt
Since the beginning of July 2021, the percentage of Switzerland’s population that has received at least one shot of Covid-19 vaccine has risen by only around 3 percentage points. Switzerland now has one of the lowest daily and cumulative vaccination rates in western Europe. Switzerland is now 15 percentage points behind the UK, 12 behind […]
UK drops quarantine for fully vaccinated European and US visitors
On 29 July 2021, Grant Shapps, UK Secretary of State for Transport, announced that quarantine rules for fully vaccinated people arriving from the US and nations in Europe on the UK’s amber list would be relaxed and that no quarantine would be required for these travellers on arrival in the UK. Via Twitter, Shapps said […]
Immigrants pay higher rent than native Swiss
Those with a migration background in Switzerland are on average financially worse off than those without, according to data from the Federal Statistical Office (FSO). And those with a migration background pay on average 10% more per square metre of living space than the rest of the population. In Switzerland, around 20% of those with […]
